Ernst Sedgewiek Hanfstaengl (or Hanfy or Putzi, as he was more usually
called), like Hjalmar Horaee Greeley Sehacht, was another German-American at
the core of the rise of Hitlerism. Hanfstaengl was born into a well-known New
England family; he was a cousin of Civil War General John Sedgewiek and a
grandson of another Civil War General, William Heine. Introduced to Hitler in
the early l920s by Captain Truman-Smith, the U.S. Military Attaehe in Berlin,
Putzi became an ardent Hitler supporter, on occasion financed the Nazis and,
according to Ambassador William Dodd, "... is said to have saved Hitler's
life in 1923."1

By coincidence, S.S. leader
Heinrich Himmler's father was also Putni's form master at the Royal Bavarian
Wilhelms gymnasium. Putzi's student day friends at Harvard University were
"such outstanding future figures" as Walter Lippman, John Reed (who
figures prominently in Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution), and
Franklin D. Roosevelt. After a few years at Harvard, Putzi established the
family art business in New York; it was a delightful combination of business
and pleasure, for as he says, "the famous names who visited me were
legion, Pierpont Morgan, Toscanini, Henry Ford, Caruso, Santos-Dumont, Charlie
Chaplin, Paderewski, and a daughter of President Wilson."2 It was also at
Harvard that Putzi made friends with the future President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt:

I took most of my meals at
the Harvard Club, where I made friends with the young Franklin D. Roosevelt,
at that time a rising New York State Senator. Also I received several
invitations to visit his distant cousin Teddy, the former President, who had
retired to his estate at Sagamore Hill.3

From these varied friendships (or
perhaps after reading this book and its predecessors, Wall Street and FDR and
Wall Street and the Bolshevik
Revolution, the reader may consider
Putzi's friendship to have been confined to a peculiarly elitist circle),
Putzi became not only an early friend, backer and financier of Hitler, but
among those early Hitler supporters he was, "., . almost the only
person who crossed the lines of his (Hitler's) groups of acquaintances."4

In brief, Putzi was an
American citizen at the heart of the Hitler entourage from the early 1920s to
the late 1930s. In 1943, after falling out of favor with the Nazis and
interned by the Allies, Putzi was bailed out of the miseries of a Canadian
prisoner of war camp by his friend and protector President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. When FDR's actions threatened to become an internal political
problem in the United States, Putzi was re-interned in England. As if it is
not surprising enough to find both Heinrich Himmler and Franklin D. Roosevelt
prominent in Putzi's life, we also discover that the Nazi Stormtrooper
marching songs were composed by Hanfstaengl, "including the one that was
played by the brownshirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor
on the day Hitler took over power.5 To top this eye-opener, Putzi averred that
the genesis of the Nazi chant "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," used in the
Nazi mass rallies, was none other than "Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah,
rah, rah."

Putzi certainly helped finance
the first Nazi daily press, the Volkische Beobachter. Whether he saved
Hitler's life from the Communists is less verifiable, and while kept out of
the actual writing process of Mein Kampf — much to his disgust — Putzi did have the honor to finance its publication, "and the fact that
Hitler found a functioning staff when he was released from jail was entirely
due to our efforts. ,"7

When Hitler came to power in
March 1933, simultaneously with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington, a
private "emissary" was sent from Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. to
Hanfstaengl in Berlin, with a message to the effect that as it appeared Hitler
would soon achieve power in Germany, Roosevelt hoped, in view of their long
acquaintance, that Putzi would do his best to prevent any rashness and
hot-headedness. "Think of your piano playing and try and use the soft
pedal if things get too loud," was FDR's message. "If things
start getting awkward please get in touch with our ambassador at once.8

Hanfstaengl kept in close
touch with the American Ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd — apparently much
to his disgust, because Putzi's recorded comments on Dodd are distinctly
unflattering:

In many ways, he [Dodd] was an
unsatisfactory representative. He was a modest little Southern history
professor, who ran his embassy on a
shoestring and was probably trying to save money out of his pay. At a time
when it needed a robust millionaire to compete with the flamboyance of the
Nazis, he teetered around self-effacingly as if he were still on his
college campus. His mind and his prejudices were small.9

In point of fact Ambassador
Dodd pointedly tried to decline Roosevelt's Ambassadorial appointment. Dodd
had no inheritance and preferred to live on his State Department pay rather
than political spoils; unlike the politician Dodd was particular from whom he
received money. In any event, Dodd commented equally harshly on Putzi, "...
he gave money to Hitler in 1923, helped him write Mein Kampf, and
was in every way familiar with Hitler's motives ...."

Was Hanfstaengl an agent for
the Liberal Establishment in the U.S.? We can probably rule out this
possibility because, according to Ladislas Farago, it was Putzi who blew the
whistle on top-level British penetration of the Hitler command. Farago reports
that Baron William S. de Ropp had penetrated the highest Nazi echelons in
pre-World War II days and Hitler used de Ropp "... as his
confidental consultant about British affairs.10 De Ropp was suspected as being
a double agent only by Putzi. According to Farago:

The only person ... who ever
suspected him of such duplicity and cautioned the Fuehrer about him was the
erratic Putzt Hanfstaengl, the Harvard educated chief of Hitler's office
dealing with the foreign press.

As Farago notes, "Bill de
Ropp was playing the game In both camps — a double agent at the very
top."11 Putzi was equally diligent in warning his friends, the Hermann
Goerings, about potential spies in their camp. Witness the following
extract from Putzi's memoirs, in which he points the accusing finger of
espionage at the Goerings' gardener..

"Herman," I said
one day, "I will bet any money that fellow Greinz is a police
spy." "Now really, Putzi," Karin [Mrs. Herman Goertng] broke
in, "he's such a nice fellow and he's a wonderful gardener."
"He's doing exactly what a spy ought to do," I told her, "he
has made himself indispensable."12

By 1941 Putzi was out of favor
with Hitler and the Nazis, fled Germany, and was interned in a Canadian
prisoner of war camp. With Germany and the United States now at war Putzi
re-calculated the odds and concluded, "Now I knew for certain that
Germany would be defeated."13 Putzi's release from the POW camp came
with the personal intervention of old friend President Roosevelt:

One day a correspondent of
the Hearst press named Kehoe obtained permission to visit Fort Hens. I
managed to have a few words with him in a corner. "I know your boss
well," I told him. "Will you do me a small service?"
Fortunately he recognized my name.

I gave him a letter, which
he slipped into his pocket. It was addressed to the American Secretary of
State, Cordell Hull. A few days later it was on the desk of my Harvard Club
friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In it I offered to act as a political and
psychological warfare adviser in the war against Germany.14

The response and offer to
"work" for the American side was accepted. Putzi was installed in
comfortable surroundings with his son, U.S. Army Sergeant Egon Hanfstaengl,
also there as a personal aide. In 1944, under pressure of a Republican threat
to blow the whistle on Roosevelt's favoritism for a former Nazi, Egon was
shipped out to New Guinea and Putzi hustled off to England, where the British
promptly interned him for the duration of the war, Roosevelt or no Roosevelt,

Putzi's friendships and
political manipulations may or may not be of any great consequence, but his
role in the Reichstag fire is significant. The firing of the Reichstag on
February 27, 1933 is one of the key events of modern times. The fire was used
by Adolf Hitler to claim imminent Communist revolution, suspend constitutional
rights, and seize totalitarian power. From that point on there was no turning
back for Germany; the world was set upon the course to World War II.

At the time the firing of the
Reichstag was blamed on the Communists, but there is little question in
historical perspective that the fire was deliberately set by the Nazis to
provide an excuse to seize political power. Fritz Thyssen commented in the
post-war Dustbin interrogations:

When the Reichstag was
burned, everyone was sure it had been done by the communists. I later
learned in Switzerland that it was all a lie.15

Schacht states quite
emphatically:

Nowadays it would be quite
clear that this action could not be fastened on the Communist Party. To what
extent individual National Socialists co-operated in the planning and
execution of the deed will be difficult to establish, but in view of all
that has been revealed in the meantime, the fact must be accepted that
Goebbels and Goering each played a leading part, the one in planning, the
other in carrying out the plan.16

The Reichstag fire was
deliberately set, probably utilizing a flammable liquid, by a group of
experts. This is where Putzi Hanfstaengl comes into the picture. The key
question is how did this group, bent on arson, gain access to the Reichstag to
do the job? After 8 p.m. only one door in the main building was unlocked and
this door was guarded. Just before 9 p.m. a tour of the building by watchmen
indicated all was well; no flammable liquids were noticed and nothing was out
of the ordinary in the Sessions Chamber where the fire started. Apparently no
one could have gained access to the Reichstag building after 9 p.m., and no
one was seen to enter or leave between 9 p.m. and the start of the fire.

There was only one way a group
with flammable materials could have entered the Reichstag — through a tunnel
that ran between the Reichstag and the Palace of the Reichstag President.
Hermann Goering was president of the Reichstag and lived in the Palace, and
numerous S.A. and S.S. men were known to be in the Palace. In the words of one
author:

The use of the underground
passage, with all its complications, was possible only to
National-Socialists, the advance and escape of the incendiary gang was
feasible only with the connivance of highly-placed employees of the
Reichstag. Every clue, every probability points damningly in one direction,
to the conclusion that the burning of the Reichstag was the work of
National-Socialists.17

How does Putzi Hanfstaengl fit
into this picture of arson and political intrigue?

Putzi — by his own admission
— was in the Palace room at the other end of the tunnel leading to the
Reichstag. And according to The Reichstag Fire Trial, Putzi Hanfstaengl
was actually in the Palace itself during the fire:

propaganda apparatus stood
ready, and the leaders of the Storm Troopers were in their places. With the
official bulletins planned in advance, the orders of arrest prepared,
Karwahne, Frey and Kroyer waiting patiently in their cafe, the preparations
were complete, the scheme almost perfect.18

Dimitrov also asserts that:

The National-Socialist
leaders, Hitler, Goering and Goebbels, together with the high
National-Socialist officials, Daluege, Hanfstaengl and Albrecht, happened to
be present in Berlin on the day of the fire, despite that the election
campaign was at its highest pitch throughout Germany, six days before the
poll. Goering and Goebbels, under oath, furnished contradictory explanations
for their "fortuitous" presence in Berlin with Hitler on that day.
The National-Socialist Hanfstaengl, as Goering's "guest," was
present in the Palace of the Reichstag President, immediately adjacent to
the Reichstag, at the time when the .fire broke out, although his
"host" was not there at that time.19

According to Nazi Kurt Ludecke,
there once existed a document signed by S.A. Leader Karl Ernst — who
supposedly set the fire and was later murdered by fellow Nazis — which
implicated Goering, Goebbels, and Hanfstaengl in the conspiracy.

Hjalmar Schacht challenged his
post-war Nuremburg interrogators with the observation that Hitler's New Order
program was the same as Roosevelt's New Deal program in the United States. The
interrogators understandably snorted and rejected the observation. However, a
little research suggests that not only are the two programs quite similar in
content, but that Germans had no trouble in observing the similarities. There
is in the Roosevelt Library a small book presented to FDR by Dr. Helmut Magers
in December 1933.20 On the flyleaf of this presentation copyis written
the inscription,

To the President of the
United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in profound admiration of his
conception of a new economic order and with devotion for his personality.
The author, Baden, Germany, November 9, 1933.

FDR's reply to this admiration
for his new economic order was as follows:21

(Washington) December 19,
1933

My dear Dr. Magers: I want
to send you my thanks for the copy of your little book about me and the
"New Deal." Though, as you know, I went to school in Germany and
could speak German with considerable fluency at one time, I am reading
your book not only with great interest but because it will help my German.

Very sincerely yours,

The New Deal or the "new economic order" was not a creature of classical liberalism. It was a
creature of corporate socialism. Big business as reflected in Wall Street
strived for a state order in which they could control industry and eliminate
competition, and this was the heart of FDR's New Deal. General Electric, for
example, is prominent in both Nazi Germany and the New Deal. German General
Electric was a prominent financier of Hitler and the Nazi Party, and A.E.G.
also financed Hitler both directly and indirectly through Osram. International
General Electric in New York was a major participant in the ownership and
direction of both A.E.G. and Osram. Gerard Swope, Owen Young, and A. Baldwin
of General Electric in the United States were directors of A.E.G. However, the
story does not stop at General Electric and financing of Hitler in 1933.

In a previous book, Wall
Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, the author identified the role of
General Electric in the Bolshevik Revolution and the geographic location of
American participants as at 120 Broadway, New York City; the executive offices
of General Electric were also at 120 Broadway. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was working in Wall Street, his address was also 120 Broadway. In fact,
Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, the FDR Foundation, was located at 120
Broadway. The prominent financial backer of an early Roosevelt Wall Street
venture from 120 Broadway was Gerard Swope of General Electric. And it was
"Swope's Plan" that became Roosevelt's New Deal — the fascist plan
that Herbert Hoover was unwilling to foist on the United States. In brief,
both Hitler's New Order and Roosevelt's New Deal were backed by the same
industrialists and in content were quite similar — i.e., they were
both plans for a corporate state.

There were then both corporate
and individual bridges between FDR,s America and Hitler's Germany. The first
bridge was the American I.G. Farben,
American affiliate of I.G. Farben, the largest German corporation. On the
board of American I.G. sat Paul Warburg, of the Bank of Manhattan and the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The second bridge was between International
General' Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric Company and
its partly owned affiliate in Germany, A.E.G. Gerard Swope, who formulated
FDR's New Deal, was chairman of I.G.E. and on the board of A.E.G. The third
"bridge" was between Standard Oil of New Jersey and Vacuum Oil and
its wholly owned German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanisehe Gesellschaft. The
chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey was Walter Teagle, of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York. He was a trustee of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and appointed by FDR to a key administrative
post in the National Recovery Administration.

These corporations were deeply
involved in both the promotion of Roosevelt's New Deal and the construction of
the military power of Nazi Germany. Putzi Hanfstaengl's role in the early
days, up to the mid-1930s anyway, was an informal link between the Nazi elite
and the White House. After the mid-1930s, when the world was set on the course
for war, Putzis importance declined — while American Big Business continued
to be represented through such intermediaries as Baron Kurt von Schroder
attorney Westrick, and membership in Himmler's Circle of Friends.